create the folders where? Sounds like a silly question, but it is all important. Some folders ar local those being under Local folder and for pop mail accounts. These largely follow the rules for creating folder names in Windows. Then there are folder in IMAP accounts. These are loony beasties that follow very little in the name of rhyme or reason. What is acceptable or not os largely determines by the IMAP server. I have feeling this might be what you have. They go grey when they synchronize with the server and foul up. Some general guidelines are not to use punctuation in folder names and avoid !@#$%^&*()_+<>{}[],./?|\:;'" as most of them have special significance to operating systems, file systems, mail server implementations etc.